Posted
by
Hemos
on Monday February 07, 2005 @12:30PM
from the kim-stanley-robinson-would-be-proud dept.

hotsauce writes "The Guardian reports a NASA scientist has proposed releasing a gas on Mars to start a global warming of the planet in order to make it more hospitable for life. No word on how much traction this has amongst geophysicists. I wonder how much simulation and testing you need before we feel safe about affecting an entire planet."

Please, it is common knowledge amongst conservatives that humanity's ability to affect climate change on a global scale is a fairy tale. A fairy tale put forth by the liberal media to hurt American industry, leaving us ripe for communist invasion. Clearly we would have no chance of changing Mars's atmosphere either. Liberal wackos.

Long story short: climates changes are cyclical, we just finished a period of warming, now we're in a period of cooling.

That's certainly possible. The problem is that nobody has yet established cause and effect between CO2 and global climate, and both sides assume one or the other.

We know periods of high global temperature correlate closely with periods of high atmospheric CO2 concentration. We know that CO2 concentration has been stable since around 1000AD all the way up to when we started burning foss

Michael Crichton has a Ph.D from Harvard Medical School. The hardcover copy of State of Fear has around 21 pages of bibliography and each page has footnotes and citations for every fact. The author spent three years researching his topics before writing a book.

Don't you think that if it was as simple as he's made out to you, he'd have convinced pretty much the entire scientific world by now?

I'm sure he did his "research". I've read Cato Institute studies too that are backed by citations and other studies, and usually the studies are either dumb, contradicted by other studies, or simply do not draw the conclusions the Cato Institute wants you to think. Cato, of course, has the excuse that it's not a scientific body, it's an economic body, and it's trying to find ways to fit the world around economics.

Crichton doesn't have the luxury. He's essentially yelling "You're all wrong" to an audience where the experts continue to disagree with him after he's made his case. If you've spent any time on Usenet, you'll be familiar with lots of people who do this.

There are some consensus's at the moment:

1. The Earth is under a relatively recent spell of disproportionate warming. Whatever else it might be, cyclical seems a tad unlikely.

2. The amount of CO2 in the air is increasing as a result of human activity. (It may be for other reasons too, but right now, human beings are definitely responsible for a massive amount of CO2 generation.) This is self-evident, you can't burn carbon stocks like coal and oil without expecting it to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

3. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The experiments have been done.

Beyond that, we don't know. Most of the economists arguing against the notion there's any threat usually come down to making one of four arguments: That the first is false (no, it's true, ask NASA.) That the second is false (No, that's true too, it's self-evident.) That the third is false (erm, no, do the experiments.) Or all three might be true but we don't know if human activities are enough to make a major change to the climate, and as we don't know, we should pretend we're not and carry on business as usual.

Anyone can make use of the fourth argument because it essentially requires no proof. "They can't predict for sure that GW is caused by humans". Crichton appears to be ignoring what's going on and hoping the fuzziness and FUD inherent in the final GW-kook argument will carry the day. That's probably why there's no avalanch of scientists in existance saying "Wow, Michael, we never thought of that" (mass slapping of foreheads) "We were wrong all along."

He's an MD, not a PhD (much less a PhD in climatology), and the fact that you would change your mind about any scientific issue after reading a novel (no matter how well referenced) is pretty scary. You might like to read this [realclimate.org] for some informed criticism of Crichton's book.

You're looking at 150 or so years of decent climate data for the Earth. Then you've got ice cores and geological data which can fill in more data but with longer time rates for their measurements.

Its not that theres a X year cycle and we should be able to see that, its that there are cycles on top of cycles and large drops and increases in temperatrure of the Earth over its history. You have to deal with cycles on a geologic timeframe, on a solar t

Virgin soil = rock dust. Assuming there to be no life on Mars, I don't get what the problem is with altering it. Now naturally if there is life that's a whole can of worms in itself, but if not, then what damn difference does it make?

Well, you do not know if there's life unless and until you do research. What if you jump the gun and change Mars before you complete all research?

Furthermore, there is research that could reveal the genesis of our solar system, planet, or universe up there on Mars. We should preserve it until we are sure that we need the planet populated or that we have exhausted all scientific exploration of Mars.

It shouldn't be that hard. The core of Mars is thought to be liquid iron. The problem is that liquid iron doesn't hold a magnetic field. What we need to do is thermal ducting. Release enough core heat that the center will solidify, all the while heating the surface enough to sustain life.

The problem is that with our luck, the center wouldn't cool, but rather the outer portions of the core would cool, and eventually we'd end up with a tectonically dead planet, which is probably not what you want... bu

Who's jumping the gun? All I'm objecting to someone's the knee jerk reaction to any terraforming on the rather lame premise that Mars is "virgin soil".

Any attempt to warm the planet would have to be preceded by dozens of missions and meticulous research and preparation before anyone had any clue whether it would be a worthwhile undertaking. Any biological or geological evidence would surely form part of that evaluation.

My personal feeling is that it would not be worthwhile to warm Mars for hundreds of y

I am starting the People Unified to Stop Science In Extraterrestrial Settings. Join today to help us stop this senseless disregard for possible microbial life on Mars! Life is life and we must preserve it to the end!

Well, you do not know if there's life unless and until you do research. What if you jump the gun and change Mars before you complete all research?

Did you at least read the article? The slashdot writeup was sensationally misleading, as usual. Actually, here's some more info [nasa.gov] on the project, more than is in the Guardian link.

Basically, it is NOT a proposal to warm Mars, it's a study exploring various ways that Mars COULD be heated, and how long such methods would take (conducted by an undergrad student at U. Mass). And they even acknowledge in that link that it would be significantly well into the future before any decision would every be implemented to try warming Mars, and at that point the method of using PFC's would probably be archaic compared to future technology.

So keep your pantyhose on, NASA isn't trying to warm Mars, it's just a study. And in all likelihood it was an offshoot of various studies of global warming on Earth, in which case doing more planetary models of effects of PFCs, among others, would be a good thing!

This exact debate was played out in the Red Mars Trilogy [amazon.com] of books. One faction wanted to leave Mars in its "pristine" state, while another wanted to make it habitable by humans. An interesting read, to say the least.

Sorry but that's dumb. Everything might go wrong. Your house might burn to the ground because of an electrical fault. Does that mean you shouldn't use electricity or that you try to minimise the risk through safety standards and certification? You might hit a wall in your car. Does that mean you don't ride in a vehicle or that you should learn to drive properly and buy a car with various safety

We have no way of telling that a massive release of gas on Mars would not eventually come back to haunt us here on Earth.

For what value of "massive" are you referring? The Sun produces "massive" releases of gas and plasma constantly. Anything we do on Mars is going to be so much less energetic that it's ridiculous to consider as a possible threat to Earth.

There are plenty of other rocks ("virgin soil") to study in the solar system. This is a unique opportunity to advance science by actively terraforming Mars. We might also learn techniques to keep Earth habitable as it inevitably moves to a period with significantly less climate stablility -- it's done it before and it's about to (geologically speaking) do it again.

When Mankind can prove it can live in equilibrium oni Earth, then it can spread elsewhere.

Huh? That's suicidal. How about: until we prove we can live in equilibrium on a planet, we must spread elsewhere.

By the way, living on a planet for geolocially long periods of time will require geologic action, not misguided, pristine inaction.

This comment sounds very "insightful", but so does alot of philosophy. Real life progress is never as cut and dry, and if this thinking had its way, we'd never get anything done.

It ignores that fact there is no equilibrium on earth. It is constantly changing, and we are changing with it. It also assumes a tremendous value on "virgin soil" as if this one fact makes it better. And what is the value in waiting till we have mastered the earth to start looking at a completely different type of planet... this assumes the Earth data is going to apply to Mars somehow.

This reminds me of the people that say that humans changing the earth aren't natural, therefore it's bad. I always have to wonder what about humans aren't natural, because we are exactly like every other creature on the planet. We have absolutely no choice but to act in our nature. Somewhere along the lines someone decided that if it changes the environment too much, then it's not "natural". This argument isn't sound, or I'd argue that beavers building huge dams and creating gigantic ponds/lakes/starting small ecosystems themsleves aren't "natural".

Don't tell me now that beavers are ok because they look pretty natural doing it, but we as humans don't. Or, is it just us and the beavers now, screwing up the Earth for the whales?

I wonder what point in human evolution we became "unnatural"; Was it the whole opposable thumb thing? Tools? Fire? The wheel? The premiere of "American Idol"? The fact is, all of it is natural, just not "woodsy" like wildlife lovers would like you to believe everything should be.

But back to Mars; Sure, there might be something we could do with the soil on Mars that we can't get back if we make it habitable. On the flip side of that, what good is it if we really can't get to it for any meaningful amount of time?

There's a balance between preserving samples so that they can be observed, and entering the environment and effecting it so that one can utilize the resources.

Fact is there's going to be a balance... we're going to try things, and we'll not always be right, but we'll make progress and learn, and the "naturalist" will tell you it's never time to move forward. The guys at NASA aren't stupid, there will be alot of baby steps and testing before they decide to try anything.

This comment sounds very "insightful", but so does alot of philosophy. Real life progress is never as cut and dry, and if this thinking had its way, we'd never get anything done.

The very same can be applied to your comments themselves. I'll agree that in the larger sense we are 'natural', perhaps more correctly, 'acting in our nature', but the fact is - the Earth has been around for a long time before us, and will be here a long time after us. If we as a species what to exist for any long length of tim

It's a virgin soil and it has to remain so : we have to much to learn about it instead of polluting it

Insightful?

Terraforming Mars at the most optimistic will take centuries. During those centuries we'll have plenty of time to study Mars before there is any noticeable change. I submit that creating an ecosystem on a sterile planet, or one that harbours no multi-cellular life, as seems probable, is not polluting. In this case, the greenhouse would be literal: creating a warm hospitable environment to encourage life.

"It's a virgin soil and it has to remain so : we have to much to learn about it instead of polluting it : When Mankind can prove it can live in equilibrium oni Earth, then it can spread elsewhere."

Who's to say that (evolution --or-- our maker, depending on your beliefs) didn't intend for us to do exactly that? I mean, think about it: While we're stuck on Earth, we are one nuclear war or asteroidal impact away from extinction. How do we know that we weren't (made --or-- evolved) for the purpose of having the intelligence we needed to eventually spread our civilization out to other planets? I mean, if we lived in equilibrium, why would we ever leave the planet? If we leave the planet, we could spread our influence out in a few directions, and possibly even exist to the end of time.

You've gotta think about the bigger picture, here. You cannot assume we have an infinite time available on Earth to do our basic living.

Ill admit, I didnt RTFA. But the general thing Im reading here is based on an AWEFUL lot of assumptions, most of which arent true.

Terraforming another plante, sounds good on paper. But can we please pick a planet that is shielded from the solar wind so all the 'efforts' arent wasted away, or in this case blown away into outer space.

Without an active magnetic field, the upper atmosphere of mars would be directly exposed to solar flares, radiation storms, etc. Which is why there is no atmosphere there now.

Well that's clearly false, for a start. What about the death of the sun? Or of the universe?

More importantly, what about the uncertainties? Like nuclear war? Worldwide plague? Asteroid strike?

The fact is, Earth is a single point of failure for the human race, and we can't predict when it will fail or what will cause the failure. The only safe solution is redundancy. Terraforming Mars is the only remotely feasible option in

I'll laugh my ass off if we try everything we can to warm Mars up and it all fails, proving that our arrogant belief that we can really fuck the Earth up beyond its ability to flush us off its surface and recover, bringing rise to a much more humble species that doesn't try shit like that or think that it can, is flat-out wrong.

I'd settle for replacement by a species that can draft coherent sentences.

A much more difficult task than terraforming Mars, conceptually, is terraforming Venus.

Sci-fi authors have often implemented plot devices such as impacting ice-laden comets or moons into Venus to cool it, supply water, and spin it up; however this is fundamentally flawed, as the problem the amount of CO2. Furthermore, impacting a comet or moon will impart more energy than it would soak up. Now, perhaps with a large enough impact you could blast away part of Venus's atmosphere; however, this would need to

But here's somthing I've never quite understood. I can understand how eutrophic ponds become anoxic when you have a sudden die-off and decomposition. But with the ocean, the surface should remain oxygenated (since it has living plantlife) but the depths would be anoxic. You can only suck so much oxygen from the water. Not all the plantlife would decay since you can only take so much oxygen out of the water and most of the organic matter would be buried under sediment.

For an entertaining discussion of methods of terraforming Mars and the politics that go with them, see Red Mars [wikipedia.org] (1992), Green Mars [wikipedia.org] (1993) and Blue Mars [wikipedia.org] (1996) Kim Stanley Robinson [wikipedia.org], which scored a Nebula and two Hugos.

It's been speculated for many years to reproduce gas emissions on Mars as we do on this planet. The atmosphere was thicker on Mars then it is now; yet you have to go back to the problem that caused the atmosphere to thin in the first place. As it turns out, the core of the planet slowed down or event stop spinning causing the magnetic field to disappear.

Unless the core spins to shield the planet from the solar winds then anything done will only be temporary. The sun will simply blow off any thick atmosphere. Alas a pipe dream to teraform the whole planet unless you take some ideas from the movie Space Balls.

I guess thats why Venus' atmosphere is so tiny, its lack of magnetic field never allowed it to have one. Oh wait, it has an atmospheric pressure 90 times greater than Earth's, and all without a magnetic field.

It is known that at one time Mars had a magnetic field somewhat equivalent to Earth. Mars had a thicker atmosphere but nothing compared to the atmosphere of Venus. When the core of both planets stopped spinning; the atmosphere of one was wiped away while the other wasn't.

Now let me speculate that the atmosphere of Venus is thick enough on it's own to prevent the solar winds from wiping it off the face while Mars never had such a thick atmosphere. Mars had to have the protection of a magnetic field to have an atmosphere.

Very good data about the fields were found on a quick search: I like these twohttp://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russel l/pap ers/venus_mag/http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/perso nnel/russell/pap ers/mars_mag/

On a related note, the Earth doesn't have the gravity to hold Hydrogen or Helium. I've always imagined that the stuff probably boils off at a rate that varies with the amount of water in the upper atmosphere.

And there seems to be a good amount of water entering due to mini comets (see Dr. Frankl's mini comet theory, which received support a few years back from some NASA studies. We may be constantly getting new water added, mostly to our upper

Simply by looking at the difference in diameters of the planets, you can see that Earth and Venus are very very close in diameter, while Mars is about half the diameter of either of these planets. That is the main contributor to the loss of any atmosphere (if it existed on the first place.) To hold an atmosphere, a planet needs to be of a certain mass (size,) so that the escape velocity of the planet is greater than the velocity

At a given temperature, a gas has a certain pressure and root mean speed (norm of velocity from its kinetic energy). (A bit of calculation can show it to be (3kT/m)^(1/2), where k is Boltzmann's constant, T is temp in Kelvin, and m the gas molecule's mass.)

If the root mean square of the gas is comparable to the escape velocity (2GM/R)^(1/2), the the majority of the gas will only stick around for a few days (if v_{esc} / v_{rms} is around 1), or maybe a few years. In fact, for the majority of the gas to be retained by the planet for several billion years, we need v_{esc} / v_{rms} around 10 or more.

It turns out that v_{esc} / v_{rms} for Mars for most gases is too low. Water, ammonia, and methane, as well as helium and hydrogen are too light to be retained for long. (Although it turns out that water is just a bit too light, so it might stick around for thousands or millions or years.) However, it does appear oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide might be just heavy enough to be retained.

This means that if there had ever been a significant amount of liquid water on Mars, it would not have stuck around long. CO2, and O2, on the other hand, have a shot. (So I guess we could design a breathable atmosphere, but water would be a problem.)

Interestingly enough, these figures change (for the worse) if temperature increases on Mars (increases the kinetic energy of the gases), so making Mars more hospitable, temperature-wise, may make it less long-term hospitable, desirable molecule-wise.

I got a lot of this info from my undergrad astronomy/astrophysics text: Introductory Astronomy and Astrophysics, 4th ed, by Zeilik and Gregory. -- Paul

If we mess up, then we'll have learned a lesson which can be used next time. There's no way to learn how to go about messing with a planet's atmosphere without... messing with the atmosphere! Think ahead: If we can't live there when we need it, we can always mine it for resources.

Its likely already a dead planet... we can use it to test these new processes. What's the worst that can happen? It gets deader? Can't prove any method that complex without actual trials, I would think.

Its likely already a dead planet... we can use it to test these new processes. What's the worst that can happen? It gets deader?

Do you have proof that it's dead? Last I heard, the jury is still out on whether it's a "dead" planet. The fact is that there's still a pretty reasonable possibility of microbial life on Mars. We've already managed to make a number of species on this planet extinct. So what, we should just start doing it willy nilly wherever we want?

Well, it wouldn't be easy, but if we somehow affected Mars' orbit, we could end up indirectly affecting Earth's orbit, which could make global warming look like a minor inconvenience as we move closer to or further away from the Sun...

And how would we change Mars' orbit? Heating up the atmosphere of Mars is inconsequential to the amount of energy required to significantly perturb the orbit of a planet.

Humanity doesn't need to spread to other planets for "elbow room." It needs to spread for the survival of the human race! There is no more important goal in the history humanity than to establish itself on other planets. For all we know, if we don't get off of Earth. life itself may vanish throughout the universe.

This is the stupidest thing I've heard. And from a NASA scientist no less.

Where the hell are we supposed to get that much of ANY gas?

How are we supposed to get it to stay there on Mars? If Mars could successfully hold an atmosphere, wouldn't it still have one? I was under the impression that Mars' low gravity and weak magnetic field allowed radiation to strip away any gases on Mars' surface.

Once again, someone avoids admitting his ignorance by lashing out at someone else.

Go call up Chris McKay at NASA and tell him your feelings about his project. My prediction is that he'll say something other than "Oh my gosh! You're right! I'll begin a more realistic project immediately!"

All the key ingredients for the warming media (Fluorine based gas, according to the article) exists on Mars.

And yes, the warming agent will evaporate away in a long run. As Martian air warms it up, the rate of the evaporation would increase. This is easy to understand if you know Maxwellian distribution. If not, look it up. Basically each particles in the gas at a certain temperature doesn't all have the same kinetic energy (== mean speed); some particles have sl

Mars' gravity is perfectly capable of holding a thick atmoshpere. If you look at Venus, who's gravity is something like 98% of Earth's, it has an atmosphere 100 times thicker than ours. The thickness is determined by a lot of factors, but gravity is a relitivaly small one.

The magnetic field argument is a strong one. Its the only thing that protects the atmosphere from being blown away. However, another theory on why Mars lost its atmosphere is the following:

As rain falls through the atmosphere, CO2 dissolves in it. When this rain water hits the ground, the CO2 reacts with Calcium and others to form limestone. On earth, this limestone is eventually recycled through our tectonic processes and released in volcanos/other release points (this being part of the global warming argument that something like 70% of earths CO2 is released by volcanos and is outside our control).

However, on Mars, any tectonic activity has stopped, and as such, this limestone never gets put back into the atmosphere. It's ironic that the water itself eliminated the gas it needed to exist.

One could say its a little of both. When tectonic processes stopped, CO2 stopped being recycled leading to a slightly thinner and much colder atmosphere, at the same time that the magnetic field dissappeared and the remainder of the atmospere was blown away.

Isn't the gravity on Mars only something like 1/3 that of earth? Is that enough to support a breathable atmosphere? Our air here on earth is 21% oxygen, so to obtain the same partial pressure I assume we would need something like a 60% oxygen atmosphere. Wouldn't everything (including us?) be really dangerously flammable?

The moon is considerably harder to survive on than Mars. There's no atmosphere, sketchy evidence of water, and (unless you go polar) 14 days of darkness, which I've heard plants don't like too much.

Mars, on the other hand, has an atmosphere that can block most of the bad radiation, frozen water on the surface that we can harvest, and about a 24-hour sol. Heck, the atmosphere is almost pure CO2, which plants grow very well in. And there have been successful experiments in growing plants in Martian soil in

Somehow I suspect that whether it's right or wrong we'll feel just fine about affecting an entire planet with a minimum amount of "simulation and testing". We haven't been shy about affecting the one we live on so what makes anyone think we'll hesitate to start monkeying around with another one.

This is totally irresponsible work by NASA. Climate scientists should know better than anyone the lesson of our imminent climate change crisis. Human meddling with astoundingly complex systems like planetary climate is arrogant well beyond our competence, and predictable only by the law of unintended consequences. Screwing with Mars' atmosphere when we're just beginning to admit that we've already screwed up ours will nearly certainly make that planet harder to "manage" as it becomes more necessary to our human evolution. Humans thrive only in a very narrow band of climate parameters, out of a vast range of possible climates. When they spend a century shifting Mars unexpectedly into a less mutable climate stasis, that is just as inhospitable to human life as it is now, but a different configuration, it will take even more centuries to undo the damage, if even possible. We're just not ready for this kind of work, if we ever will be in the foreseeable future - and the stakes are too high to fool with.

Well the problem with that is that Venus's atmosphere is incredibly dense. If we could reduce that density to something aproximating terrestrial norms, then the heat on the surface would likely be a none issue (it would still be warmer than earth, but only due to solar proximity, not insulation).

However, I cannot for the life of me think of a feasible way to get rid of most of a planets atmosphere. You would need to move the gas offworld, or find some way to eliminate it. Somehow I doubt that pumping it

Of course this is going to raise the pro- vs. anti-development arguments to try to claim we should do such-and-such for the good of mankind and animals and plants and life, or not do it.

But, like genetic engineering, it is inevitable: humans will become increasingly engineered on the genetic level, that the living space of man will expand to every corner of the earth and beyond..this is our destiny.

But politics will control WHICH humans will do it, who will be the perfect beings, who will conquer Mars, and at what point will a war with Earth break out?

Being anti-genetic engineering or anti-Mars-colonization is like being anti-gun or anti-drug: forces bound to lose because of the great advantages that a sole user of the technology will have, and their power as a group will be unstoppable, whether they are an organized force or not.

I'd really like to expound on this and probably correct some of my wording, but Slashdot isn't generally a place for well-though-out arguments.

As seems to be increasingly the case, I already submitted (rejected) variants of this story twice over the past week. I've pasted one of those variants below, which has links to sources far more information than the freakin' Guardian:

Greenhouse gases could breathe life into Mars

MSNBC [msn.com], New Scientist [newscientist.com] and PhysOrg [physorg.com] report on research by Margarita Marinova and others on using synthetic greenhouse gases to warm the Martian atmosphere and create the conditions [globalnet.co.uk] for life to thrive. The study focused on fluorine-based gases (dubbed "super-greenhouse gases"), which would be non-toxic, nearly 10,000 times as effective at capturing heat as CO2, and could be made from Martian resources. The research concluded that adding 300 parts per million of these gases would lead to a feedback effect by unfreezing CO2 and water on the surface. According to Marinova, 'Since warming Mars effectively reverts it to its past, more habitable state, this would give any possibly dormant life on Mars [wikipedia.org] the chance to be revived and develop further.' The feasibility and consequences of such terraforming [wikipedia.org] have been debated in the past [rednova.com].

Also, note that contrary to the accepted submission's title, NASA hasn't done any sort of proposal of actually doing this. This is simply cool research exploring a very interesting "What-if".

2. This short and incomplete report would be comfortable in a tabloid, not in the broadsheet Guardian, a left-wing UK paper funded by a left-wing UK foundation to promote left-wing ideology. (Nothing wrong with being left-wing, or right-wing, but it helps to know who's paying for the news you're reading.)

3. This is not a NASA proposal, as/. called it, or even a proposal by the scientists involved. It's a study; no one is proposing to terraform Mars.

We, humans, are the first species on Earth capable of spreading our biosphere into space. It is not alarmist to say that continent and planet cleansing events happen on a periodic basis. The recent tsunami and asteroid 2004MN's ever-changing error ellipse are evidence of dynamic, destructive processes that affect both humanity and the larger biosphere. It is our duty, as the first space-goers, to create bio-redundancy, to explore and develop.

A project as large as terraforming Mars (or an asteroid) by it's very nature will require massive biological systems for completion. I predict that living creatures will be adapted both to vaccuum and various atmospheres, if we don't find life already there - giant tree cities on comets, kelp ponds in Mars craters, post-human cyborgs, etc.

Creating new biospheres and offworld industries will greatly improve both standards of living and our ecological footprint on Earth. Enough colonization will mean the ability to protect the home world better. Making Mars bloom is our duty and destiny.

Support private spaceflight, it's the only way this can happen. And fire up the florine pumps. 8)

Since nobody owns Mars, and what happens on Mars has no bearing at all on what happens on Earth, then the people who have both the technology and the money to make it happen have the final say. Namely, NASA and ESA (and maybe China and India in the reasonably near future?)

Even if the whole world was a democracy (which it's not), the world at large does not have the means to get there first and claim it... and the certaintly wouldn't contribute to the effort even if they did support it. So nyah nyah to them

In other news, shares of automakers flew through the roof today as speculators pointed to the need for tens of millions of automobiles that will need to be left idling for a week to trigger this. Contruction on the 6-lane highway that the cars will be parked on has begun this week, complete with toll booths and signs for Jersey City exits.

Scientists are positive that the past 100 years of atmospheric modeling on US roads has produced the most effective greenhouse booster possible.

Uhh... profit at any cost is a contradiction in terms. Our prime directive is profit, yes. And that's a good thing. Profit means generating more money than you use. Money is a representation of value. You produce something of value to others and they give you a representation of value in exchange for it. Profit is simply creating more value than you use. What we need to fix is not the profit motive. We need to make sure that no one is commiting fraud or pushing their costs onto others against their will so

The article states everything needed is available ON MARS. You'd send robotic factories to Mars to mine, process, and distribute the materials automatically. Nothing but the originial equipment would need to be sent. No chemicals would need be made here. No human interaction, except for some remote input, would be required.